Keep Having the Best

In Brazil, I keep having the best meal of my life, one right after another. Right now, I’m dining on a fish pulled out of the Atlantic Ocean only one hour earlier. The fish is grilled and served on a plank with vegetables and potatoes. It’s accompanied by fresh bread made with tapioca flour. I know, I’m not doing this description justice—it sounds like a plain old meal, right? There’s no vocabulary to convey how stupendous this dish is. All I can say is my mouth knows it’s involved in a climactic moment.

I’m getting the feeling Prianka is jerking us around. We have reason to believe that Eve and Mason are farther inland, away from the comfortable resorts we’re staying in on the coast, but she keeps finding reasons to prevent us from going. Prianka’s goals are not the same as mine. Mine is to do what we came here for, and Prianka’s are to make sure Levi does what he was elected to do. She goes through the motions of humoring us, but all the while she’s texting back to his staff in the States reporting on Levi and how he’s running amok.

Jill Riddell is a writer in Chicago. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute and has a weakness for nature, magic, and pennies abandoned in sidewalk cracks.

Trop is a project of the Pasadena Arts Council’s EMERGE Fiscal Sponsorship Program.